post-mortem from Fieldbook founder going bottom up with a complex business product; Microsoft Build Conference and Google I/O this past week was all about AI - mind blown by Google assistant making phone calls on your behalf, MSFT pushing FPGA vs custom ASICs for machine learning; Warren Buffet discusses threat of cyber and cyber insurance at his annual meeting, New Relic and Twilio crushing it in public markets!

some lessons learned in a post mortem from Jason Crawford - “What I didn’t grasp until too late was that the product focus we chose early on, essentially relational data modeling, is too complex to fit easily with this model. In contrast to the utter simplicity of Slack (chat rooms), Trello (a board of cards) or Dropbox (literally just a folder), Fieldbook required people to learn a new paradigm in order to fulfill the promise that had hooked them in.”

Warren Buffett on cyber risk and unknowns; only a matter of time before cyber security posture and metrics gets more board exposure - “CEO Warren Buffett warned that there’s about a 2% risk of a $400 billion disaster occurring as a result of a cyber attack of other issue.
“This is uncharted territory and it’s going to get worse, not better. You’re right in pointing that out as a very material risk that didn’t exist 10 to 15 years ago, and will get more intense as time goes on,” Buffett said, replying to a question about how he prepares for a big cyber-related disaster.”

time for FB to start paying users as well for access to data and putting our data on the blockchain and not on their servers - Facebook is reportedly planning to launch its own cryptocurrency with an eye towards facilitating payments on the social media site

great read from Brad Birnbaum, co-founder Kustomer (portfolio co) - “Your business has evolved, but your metrics haven’t—and it’s holding you back. Measuring Customer Lifetime Value is essential to all customer experience focused business. Focusing on the right metrics can help take your business to the next level and encourage repeat business.”